The total number of cross-regional people traveling during the Qingming Festival holiday is estimated at 840 million.

On April 7, 2026, the three-day Qingming Festival holiday came to an end. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Transport, during the Qingming Festival holiday from April 4th to 6th, the total cross-regional population movement is estimated to reach 845.378 million person-times, averaging approximately 282 million person-times per day, a 6% increase compared to the same period in 2025. With the combined effect of the spring break for primary and secondary schools in many regions and the Qingming Festival holiday, this short Qingming Festival holiday exhibited a vibrant "off-season" atmosphere, demonstrating the renewed vitality of a "mobile China."

During the Qingming Festival holiday, the weather was clear and sunny, and people flocked out of their homes to pay respects to their ancestors, enjoy the spring scenery, or travel with their families. Monitoring data from the Ministry of Transport showed that the scale of population movement during this holiday reached a new high for Qingming Festival holidays. In terms of transportation modes, road travel remained the dominant mode, while rail and waterway passenger volumes both achieved double-digit growth, and air passenger volume saw a slight decline.

The travel structure is diversified, with highways as the main mode and railways leading the way.

Specifically, the performance of each mode of transportation varied:

• Railway passenger volume is estimated at 57.679 million trips, averaging 19.23 million trips per day, representing a year-on-year increase of 8.2%. On the first day of the holiday (April 4th), the national railway system transported 22.123 million passengers, setting a new record for single-day passenger volume during the Qingming Festival holiday.
• Road passenger traffic is estimated at 778.45 million trips, averaging 259.48 million trips per day, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.8%, accounting for over 90% of all traffic and serving as the core mode of holiday travel.
• Waterway passenger traffic is estimated at 3.725 million trips, averaging 1.24 million trips per day, representing a year-on-year increase of 9.8%, the highest growth rate among all modes.
• Air passenger traffic is estimated at 5.524 million trips, averaging 1.84 million trips per day, a year-on-year decrease of 1.3%, making it the only mode of transportation to experience a year-on-year decline.

Notably, on the first day of the holiday, the national highway traffic volume exceeded 62.67 million vehicles, of which over 14 million were new energy vehicles. The booming self-driving travel has driven double-digit growth in spending on scenic spots, hotels, and car rentals.

The extended Spring Festival holiday has spurred the creation of a "Golden Week" in spring.

The biggest highlight of this year's Qingming Festival holiday was the combination of the spring break for primary and secondary schools in many regions with the three-day Qingming holiday. Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and other provinces implemented a "three-day spring break + Qingming holiday" model, creating the first "unadjusted spring golden week" of 2026.

This policy completely rewrote the traditional Qingming holiday travel pattern, which was mainly focused on short-distance outings, significantly expanding the public's travel radius. Data from Qunar.com shows that from April 1st to 6th, the number of passengers traveling within a radius of over 800 kilometers increased by more than 30% year-on-year; the number of passengers aged 13 to 18 traveling by air increased by 70%, with many children purchasing their "first plane ticket."

Parent-child travel and family travel became the absolute mainstay of this holiday. Theme parks were extremely popular, with Beijing Universal Resort and Shanghai Disney Resort continuing to lead the way. Immersive Chinese-style theme parks such as the Xi'an "Song of Everlasting Regret" performance area and Kaifeng Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden also saw booming popularity, with related search volume doubling year-on-year.

• Travel Purposes: A convergence of four major travel flows has emerged: tomb sweeping, spring outings, family visits, and study tours. Family and parent-child travel has become the main driver, leading to a surge in consumption at theme parks, rural homestays, and car rental services.
• Consumer Vitality: Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that hotel accommodation consumption on key platforms increased by 2.6% year-on-year, intercity travel increased by 15.1%, orders for family-oriented study tours doubled year-on-year, and car rental orders increased by approximately 40%.
• Urban-Rural Integration: A large number of urban residents returning to their hometowns for tomb sweeping and spring outings have injected vitality into county and rural markets, promoting the spread of consumption from central cities to all urban and rural areas.

Spring outings and flower viewing ignite the "spring economy".

With spring in full bloom across China, flowers are blossoming everywhere, making flower-viewing a major engine of holiday spending. Data from Fliggy shows that since March, searches for keywords such as "flower viewing" and "spring outing" have increased 3.8 times compared to the previous month, and the transaction volume of sightseeing and vacation packages on the platform has surged 72% year-on-year.

Various regions are launching activities such as flower goddess parades and intangible cultural heritage experiences. At the Orange Isle Scenic Area in Changsha, the Changsha Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum offered experiences in dough figurines, incense making, and stone rubbing, attracting over 13,000 visitors on the first day of the holiday. Search popularity for flower-viewing destinations such as Yangzhou's Slender West Lake, Wuyuan's Huangling, and Wuxi's Taihu Yuantouzhu remains among the highest in the country.

Meanwhile, the travel boom has also driven comprehensive growth in related consumption. According to data from Suning.com, sales of travel gear such as AI imaging flagship smartphones, smartwatches and smart sports cameras increased by more than 50% month-on-month; outdoor products on the Tmall platform were selling well, with significant increases in sales of softshell jackets, sun protection clothing, and trail running shoes; and online group-buying orders for spring tea on Douyin increased by more than 400% year-on-year.

Faced with a massive surge in passenger traffic, transportation departments across the country are making every effort to ensure service and support. The railway sector has fully implemented peak-hour schedules, with an average of over 13,000 passenger trains planned daily, and overnight high-speed trains scheduled on major high-speed rail lines such as the Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Shanghai lines. Specifically, the Guangzhou Railway Bureau added 142 overnight high-speed trains during the holiday peak period, while the Beijing Railway Bureau dynamically implemented a "one-day-one-schedule" approach, adding 124.5 pairs of temporary trains to alleviate capacity shortages on popular routes.

Regarding highways, the policy of exempting passenger vehicles with seven seats or less from highway tolls continues nationwide. The Ministry of Transport is focusing on congested road sections and service areas with particularly busy charging stations, implementing "one policy per section" and "one policy per area" to ensure smooth traffic flow and provide charging services for new energy vehicles. For key areas such as scenic spots, cemeteries, and other important locations, various regions have increased capacity and emergency dispatch, extended operating hours, and are working to meet the diverse travel needs of the public.

Conclusion

During the 2026 Qingming Festival holiday, 840 million trips were made across China, painting a vivid picture of spring. From cities to rural areas, from transportation services to cultural and tourism consumption, from traditional tomb-sweeping to emerging experiences, this holiday not only witnessed the growth in travel volume but also reflected the continued release of China's domestic demand potential.

Returning home for tomb-sweeping and in-depth rural tourism brought "popularity" to rural areas, driving consumption to spread from central cities to all urban and rural areas. From the central to local levels, a series of policy packages continued to stimulate the powerful momentum of the domestic market—nine departments, including the Ministry of Commerce, jointly issued the "2026 Work Plan for Improving Service Consumption and Benefiting the People"; Hubei Province released 15 carefully selected tourism routes for the Spring Festival holiday and launched more than 1,000 consumer-friendly policies.

As Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said, setting spring and autumn holidays helps to balance the relationship between study, life, and leisure, and appropriately slowing down the pace will bring long-term benefits to economic and social development.

This Qingming Festival, China is brimming with vitality; looking ahead, the Spring Festival holiday model is expected to become a new growth engine for the cultural and tourism market after the Spring Festival and before May Day, injecting strong momentum into a good start to the economy throughout the year.

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